Athletics: The different world of Paula's first conqueror

Michelle recalls the day she beat a world champion-to-be and points to the paths that took contrasting directions

Paula Radcliffe has come a long way since the afternoon she ran her first big race in the colours of Bedford and County Athletics Club. That was on 15 February 1986. The 12-year-old Radcliffe finished 299th in the girls' race at the English women's cross country championships at Western Park in Leicester. Sixteen years and eight months later, the former also-ran is the world cross-country champion and the world's top-ranked runner at 5,000m, 10,000m and the marathon. This afternoon in Chicago she could well add the women's marathon world mark to her running CV.

Michelle Dollard will be in front of the television set at her home in Gatley, Greater Manchester, watching Radcliffe every step of the way. Back in 1986, she had Radcliffe following her footsteps through the mud at Western Park. Mrs Dollard – or Michelle Wilkinson, as she was at the time – finished first in the girls' race at the English women's cross-country championships that year, 298 places ahead of Paula Radcliffe.

"Yes, I did win that race," she said last week, patently surprised that anyone else should have remembered the fact. "It was me, then Claire Nicholson and Sue Byrom after that. Then it was my twin sister, Lynne – she came fourth. I wasn't aware that Paula was even in the race, to be honest."

There was no reason why she should have. The young Radcliffe took a long time to pick her way through the ranks under the patient guidance of Alec and Rosemary Stanton, her coaches at the Bedford and County club. By 1991, though, she had caught up with Michelle Wilkinson. The pair ran for the Great Britain junior team that year at an eight-nation junior international match at Salamanca in Spain. Wilkinson finished third in the 800m. Radcliffe was third in the 1500m.

The following year they were also British team-mates at the World Junior Championships in Seoul. Radcliffe was still in the ascendancy. She finished fourth in the 3,000m final. Wilkinson was knocked out in the 800m semi-finals. In 1992 she entered the senior ranks but never ran faster at 800m than the 2min 6.3sec she clocked as a 17-year-old training partner of Diane Modahl.

Now 29, she has been married for six years and has a three-year-old son, Aaron. She last raced for Sale Harriers in 1997. "I don't run at all now," she said. "I'd been running from the age of five and I think I just got a bit stale with it all. I was coached by Norman Poole, Diane's coach, and his philosophy was it was better to be good as a senior than as a junior, so I was kind of held back a bit. I don't know whether his training didn't work for me or not. I'm not sure.

"But I got married, put on a bit of weight, and had a little boy. I would love to get back into it. But I'm now expecting again, just seven weeks – not very far yet. But my plans are to try to get back to fitness once I've had this next one."

Radcliffe herself is talking of taking a pregnant pause, sometime after 2004. By then she hopes to have completed a full set of major championship titles, adding world and Olympic gold medals to the Commonwealth and European titles she collected this summer. She also hopes to have written her name into the world record books, starting in Chicago this afternoon, where her sights will be on Catherine Ndereba's global mark, 2hr 18min 47sec.

Mrs Dollard wishes her well on her mission. "I'll be watching Paula on Sunday," she said. "I always watch her races. She's such a lovely girl, so down to earth. I always tell people: 'She's never changed. She could just be Joe Bloggs off the street'. Fame hasn't gone to her head. She's done absolutely fantastic. I just wish I could have done the same."

The regret was expressed with a laugh and a sigh rather than any deep chagrin. The former Michelle Wilkinson, the English girls' cross-country champion of 1986, is far from bitter that her particular running path did not take her in the same world-beating direction as Paula Radcliffe. Track-and-field history is littered with the tales of talented youngsters who never quite made it as seniors – like Kirk Dumpleton, for instance. He won the intermediates' race at the English Schools' cross-country championships at Hillingdon in 1972 – ahead of an S Ovett of Sussex and an S Coe of Yorkshire.

The irony is that Michelle Dollard has been following Paula Radcliffe's progress unaware that she had ever beaten her. "I never knew she was in that race at Leicester," she said, "and I can't really say whether we raced one another again. I became an 800m runner and Paula was a 1500m/3,000m runner on the track. There might have been the odd cross-country race, but I can't be sure.

"We did get to know each other. I went on quite a few national squad training weekends with her to Loughborough and we went on a lot of British junior team trips together. She started to come through in 1991 or 1992, though, which was when I was starting to get a bit stale really. I worked as a secretary and it was very hard getting in at 6.30pm every night and then having to go out to the training track. Like I said, I'd been running from the age of five and we were always in the local papers, myself and Lynne – the Wilkinson twins. I think all that does take a bit of a toll on you.

"It's funny, but I went down to the Asda store across the road from the Commonwealth Stadium a few days before the Games began and when I saw all the barriers up I got such a nervous feeling, as if I was going to compete myself. I would have loved to have been there to see Paula's race but unfortunately we couldn't get any tickets. Still, it was great just watching it on telly."

It should be great watching Paula Radcliffe on television this afternoon too – and great for Michelle Dollard to reflect that she was in there at the start of the Paula Radcliffe Running Story, in pole position. "I can still picture the race now," she said. "It was an uphill finish and there were three of us going for it. I wasn't expected to win it, but I came out the strongest.

"That race has always meant a lot to me. It's just nice that it's remembered."